Alarm across Europe as English-language export editions skewer domestic markets

The success of Britain’s English-language export sales into some European markets is cannibalising local book sales, gutting translation revenue, harming Anglophone author earnings and has “an unpleasantly colonial feel”.

That is the opinion of many editors, agents and rights professionals on the current trading climate as the 75th Frankfurt Book Fair opened for business. The issue is particularly acute in relatively small European territories with a high level of English literacy, such as the Netherlands, Nordics and the Baltics, but many have noted it encroaching into some larger markets, particularly Germany.

Laurence Laluyaux, RCW agent, director and head of international, said: “It is undeniable that English-language book exports are having a growing impact on the ability to sell Anglophone authors in translation and that there is a waning of appetite in some markets. The competition is problematic, not least because these export editions are always cheaper than the local editions and aren’t subject to national laws such as fixed price.”

The issue comes amid a surge of English-language sales into mainland Europe, driven in part by the BookTok phenomenon. The UK Publishers Association reported this summer that export revenue for its members in 2022 rose 8% year on year, with spikes including a 6% bump in the Netherlands (to £47.3m), a 4% jump in Sweden (£35.3m) and a massive 27% leap in Germany, which at £130.1m is the UK’s biggest market on the continent.

Rachel Mills, founder of London-based agency Rachel Mills Literary, writing in The Bookseller today, argues that Anglophone authors will be hit hard if UK exports win out over translation, or even locally published English-language titles: “It is a serious question of income for authors. The royalties they receive on UK export sales are a tiny percentage of those they receive on local-language edition sales.”

Mills added: “There is also an unpleasantly colonial feel to the idea that our industry is encouraging everyone to read in English. Surely anyone who cares about reading would want to celebrate the amazing diversity of language in our continent?”

Publishing in the Netherlands has been hard hit with redundancies and restructures across several prominent houses—including De Bezige Bij, Atlas-Contact and Bruna—in the past year. Though several issues have played into this, many Dutch publishers reckon the influx of imported English-language books is a significant factor, and a trend more pronounced in younger readers.

Thille Dop, senior publisher for children’s and YA at Amsterdam-based Luitingh-Sijthoff, says that while 20% of overall Dutch book retail sales come from English imports, that figure is as high as 60% in YA. She says: “It is almost impossible for us to buy [English-authored] YA rights. There is no point and it does not look like it will get better, as our booksellers are expanding their English sections. We are looking to other languages to acquire rights, for example French and Italian.”

One of the big worries for many British rights-traders is Germany, long one of the most fecund territories for translation deals. One German publisher at a large multinational, who asked not to be named, said: “We are in direct competition with [our sister company in the UK] even when we are selling the same book. It’s a race to get the German translation published at the same time; sales figures drop by four figures for every month we appear later [than the English-language release] with our German edition. Every German publisher I know is trying to come up with a strategy to combat this.”

For RCW’s part, Laluyaux said the agency’s response is for more boots on the ground in those European territories and “working very closely with international publishers on their publications, organising trips for our authors and putting them forward for festivals in a very proactive manner”.